For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish."
> In January 2026, Germany's federal court ruled that purchasing a Deutsche Bahn ticket constitutes a form of gambling (Glücksspiel), citing that “the probability of arriving on time is statistically comparable to a coin flip.”
> Rather than contest the ruling, DBSM embraced it. If riding our trains is gambling, then passengers deserve the right to hedge.
> BahnBet is our answer: a platform where you can bet against your own train, turning delays into suffering, and suffering into profit. Every minute of punctuality you lose, you can win back in deliciously valuable caßh.
In all fairness, being both an avid Deutsche Bahn victim (with the Gold victim status), and knowing the German court system ... that was perfectly plausible, if a bit optimistic. I'd do many, many things if I got a 50% chance of arriving on time.
for the people who wouldn't have inadvertently clicked on the website: it's not real money, it's a campaign to nudge the German provider to care about their infamous delays
It's incredible that about 80% of people in this thread seem to be commenting without having looked at the website.
In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Also, it went through a pseudo-privatisation back then, which hasn't helped (just private enough to focus on quarterly profits by letting bridges decay so that they have to be rebuilt or repaired in a few years, just public enough that they have to serve a lot of non-lucrative areas by law).
I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt. It's just that politicians dealt them a really bad hand. And if Germany were to properly invest in infrastructure from now on, there's so much stuff that has to be repaired that reliability would go down even more in the next decade or so (seriously, this is not something you could fix in a year or two, even with hundreds of billions).
> In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
I think the defense is that it's the fault of the politicians (CDU/CSU, actually), as they are the ones allocating funds towards train infrastructure. The Deutsche Bahn is state-owned in all but name (which was one of the major fuckups of the last red-green government).
Yes everyone does their best but in typical german fashion nobody does the right thing because it would mean to break some rules or habit. Its a general problem but it shows hard at DB.
As someone who is in a group who regularly trashes DB at will, no one blames the line employees, but definitely blame people in upper levels of management
> I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt.
I think most people don't blame the normal employees. The blame is on the management layers, the "Wasserkopf", that gives themselves boni, even if things are done poorly and are going badly. A disconnect from the reality on the tracks.
I don't see improvements. I rather see worse and worse reliability, even though Deutsche Bahn asks for more and more money from the government. That money is disappearing somewhere, at least partially, instead of arriving in projects for improving the situation. In many places, if not most, there isn't even a single turnout track, so that any construction work halts the whole line. Disastrous. You cannot ask people to buy train tickets for 100 to 200 EUR, and then be hours late. I mean, you can, but then you are delusional. They are not surviving because of their great product or service, they are only surviving, because people don't have good alternatives. Basically, it is extortion. In other countries I pay 1/10 of the ticket price and I arrive on friggin' time, on a much longer ride.
Privitisation is a huge curse, and a tremendous scam perpetuated by capitalist financiers. Where has it ever produced better results? No private entity can provide a service at cost like the government can.
Telekom is a profitable enterprise. Yet, telecom infrastructure in Germany is on a remarkably bad level and relatively expensive. Cell coverage is also still bad, especially when travelling via rail or car.
With the exception if the Japanese Rail, all the other examples are different in one crucial detail: they are not natural monopolies.
I don’t think you’re aware of how bad the national railway has been managed in japan, they even went broke in the 80s with trillions in debt and had to split up sell off all their infrastructure and vehicles. That’s the reason why there’s often many non-interconnected competing stations at the same site today.
I would not call telecommunications privatization in Germany a success story.
Yes, we can use more devices now. Prices have stayed more or less the same (or have risen, corrected by inflation. Service quality has collapsed, though.
I am pretty sure that they know about the delays. A nice thing about the Deutsche Bahn is that they exist. It's not the case in every country in the world.
Sure, they can improve, but it seems possible. The French SNCF has improved a lot in the last decade, for instance.
At this point here in the south of Germany not having DB would be an improvement.
Now it exists and you might even try to take it just to be delayed and disappointed. You'll lose your money and they behave in their arrogant manner with impunity.
Their customer "service" will definitely tell you how it's your own fault for having had the nerve to actually try to take their train. You might have even carried some dirt to the train for Christs sake!
So yeah. Not having it would already be an improvement. You'd just shrug and move on and take an alternative transport. Even horse and carriage would be better.
> A nice thing about the Deutsche Bahn is that they exist. It's not the case in every country in the world.
EU does not have a train monopoly.
There are other train companies in Germany (FlixTrain, OBB, BRB...). And operators from other countries can also operate there, even French SNCF!
DB is blocking slots on rail, that could be used by other operators. And they are not going to change because it is Germany.
I recently experienced this with CD from Karlovy Vary to Berlin. It was snowing that day and inside of the Czech Republic I was enjoying the scenic view of the Egerland without any delays.
But as soon as we pulled into Germany, the train came to a stop - problems with the rail security infrastructure, nothing the train operator has any influence on.
This is true. DB trains get me from one point to another point, and in my experience, are usually not more than a few hours delayed end-to-end.
Remember that if your train is delayed more than a certain amount (30 minutes?) you have the legal right to ignore the routing on your ticket and take any train you want, that leads towards the destination on your ticket. Consider it an adventure. The app can suggest alternative routes in real-time, and you can also ask at the info desk at any station that has one.
The problem is the infrastructure.
There is already the Generalsanierung under way, it will take a decade and secure the status quo.
A lot of delays are due to rail corridors being at capacity, but overboarding bureaucracy makes any improvement there a generational project.
Hamburg - Hanover has been discussed for decades with strong opposition from NIMBY groups with no solution in sight.
But even if there is no opposition things take ages.
E.g. for restoring the 2nd track and electrification between Cottbus and Görlitz the plan is now to finish the project by 2041.
This is absolutely insane for 100km of track that were removed as WW2 reparations.
And looking at previous projects it's unlikely to finish in time.
The new S-Bahn track in Berlin between the main station and Gesundbrunnen was supposed to open in 2017. It got delayed over and over and is now finally scheduled to open by the end of this month - just a delay of 9 years.
And that's with an interim station because the real station at Hauptbahnhof wasn't finished in time - and no intermediate stop, that's now also in the planning phase and will mean the line will have to be interrupted again in the near future
When Generalsanierung is over, they can start again right away. That's just the maintenance/running cost. What is needed is building turnout tracks and other stuff to avoid delays. The delays turn people away from riding trains, or buying tickets. We want to combat climate change, but our train service is so bad, that people prefer to drive 4-person cars, alone, for hours, during which they need to be paying attention to the road at all times, instead of sitting in a train and relaxing, or getting stuff done, that they can do during the ride. There is something fundamentally wrong.
Thanks for the context. Since I'm not interested in betting, I had not clicked on the grey on white About link at the bottom, which says:
> All the trains, delays, and data on this app are real.But the money isn't – because for that I'd need to move to Malta. Or Cyprus. Or Schleswig-Holstein.
I wonder how hard it would be to get a court ruling or new law that DB is required to bet on every arrival, and make their bets public in easily-digestible formats like .csv
I'd really like to see that happen for the S-trains, as well--DB loves nothing more than continuing to project an on-time arrival on the station board, as the time of departure comes and goes and other trains arrive and depart.
For Deutsche Bahn, freelance contracting jobs in their IT famously always require 2+ years experience in train infrastructure companies as a hard requirement. Not joking, this is a common pattern in their job ads. Look at this ad, where they are looking for a Go/React/RabbitMQ expert: https://www.freelancermap.de/projekt/senior-fullstack-entwic...
Why is that an issue? It's a freelance gig, so you are free to ask for whatever requirements you want.
But I remember being interviewed for a cybersecurity job at Siemens's Trains division and the german guys there started grilling me on some obscure cybersecurity standards used by the rail industry, even though that was never in my pentest resume and it's something that can be learned on the job.
Germans really hate hiring people who don't 100% fit a job description no matter how impossible it is. No wonder their economy is stagnant, when it's based on HR box ticking instead of aptitudes.
Idea for using the betting/data or other statistics about potential train delay:
One gets back 50% if reaching the destination is delayed by more than 2h. Schedule the journey such that this is probable, making the journey 50% cheaper. Potentially with being able to define where one should be stuck waiting for the next train connected with sight seeing opportunities (such as the nice quarter near the Frankfurt main train station -- old ECB building!).
In 2019 there was a talk about data mining the DB arrival data [1] (yes, this problem is nothing new). One of the takeaways was that on some connections you can actually buy a "Sparticket" (cheaper, but only valid for a specific train), but get it upgraded to a "Flexticket" (more expensive, can take any train on the route) for free. This works because a delay of more than X minutes removes the specific train requirement and some routes are nearly always delayed by at least that threshold.
For international through Germany we used to get 100% back after four hour delays but they stopped doing that ... For obvious reasons. I traveled for free multiple times in the (long) past. Also fun of you wanted to get more back: if you had a first class ticket and reserved seat and had to switch trains and re-reserved you would get a free ticket with a stamp price for about 5 euro. Which you could ask back. So you got at least a coffee for free.
The proliferation of online gambling is IMO one of the bigger under-reported trends in modern society, and has a real potential for massive externalities throughout society.
I'm aware, but the existence of this site both reminded me of the existence of this problem, and IMO likely will inspire polymarket or some other crypto gambling site to offer the 'real' version of this.
Having a gambling addict in your life can be just as destructive if not more destructive as having a drug addict in your life.
This is something that most people don't currently understand because most people don't really have much experience with gambling addicts and the sort of horrible things they will do to satisfy their cravings, but as the amount of gamblers in society grows explosively, we're all going to be feeling the effects of being surrounded by these people.
it was always going to happen. there was even an episode of The Office where they started betting on meaningless outcomes for a little sense of purpose.
It's all sliding slope when the only way an average citizen can reap the economic growth of their own country is stock market and saving only makes them poorer.
Yeah, you would have to focus on buying things you actually need. Be able to save for and look forward towards a stable future.
Don't get a new pocket computer every year because the software is not updated anymore. Use fewer subscription services? Maybe do away with the disposable vapes with lithium ion batteries in them.
Yes, but simple inflation isn't the problem. In a stable economy, we spend money as we received it, and take on loans for large purchases. In fact the economy was that way before. Now, things are too unsteady for that.
> In a stable economy, we spend money as we received it, and take on loans for large purchases. In fact the economy was that way before.
You used to be able to save for most large purchases without going into debt. Even cars.
But no, these days cars tend to be so goddamn expensive while at the same time being so low-margin products for the dealerships that even if you theoretically can pay in cash, the salespeople do their best to force you into some sort of debt because the kickback from that is the only way they make money. And practically, rents suck up so much of your income you can't save anyway.
Nothing. It's just a number in an account. It's what we call money basically.
Banks don't profit from keeping your deposits, they profit from running the money supply which empowers them to create new money which they tax or, in other words, loans on which they charge interest.
Go and try to withdraw something tangible with intrinsic value from a bank and you'll see they don't owe you anything at all. The most you'll get from them is paper, but even then you'll find it withdraw all your money in paper.
I just opened an account for you in my own bank, in fact. You have one million credits. You are free to send and receive credits from anybody else with an account (which is nobody, unfortunately). I owe you nothing.
> Why ever do anything at all with your money, ever, otherwise? Except for basic needs.
Why indeed? If people are only buying stuff because they are afraid of their money being worth less in the future then those are things people don't even want, let alone need. Why is it a good thing for us to endlessly churn out stuff people don't even want?
When I was young (70s-80s), we were all amazed by Deutsche Bahn's punctuality and quality of service (second only to the Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses). Now, French and Italian trains are a lot more reliable, which is rather strange.
The Swiss Federal Railways asked German trains to wait at the border and has even ban many German trains to enter Switzerland over excessive delays to prevent their train schedule from being affected.
The site is hilarious by the way. I hope it will have an effect on DB, even though I doubt it.
The way I see it, French trains are more reliable, but they mostly go from Paris to other places. Germany operates a mesh network, with more lines, more centers, and more trains.
I've been living in Germany for a very long time and the real decline started some ten years ago. At the beginning mostly because of poor maintenance. My first years with the DB 100 card (allowing to travel on all trains) were a pleasure then it deteriote to the point where you start yourself: where is this heading. As I said, the ban of SBB on German trains was a turning point for me.
But You're right about the networks being different (mostly because France suppressed many local lines in the last 20 years.
Yeah, unfortunely it isn't that hard to win a bit, the situation has become relatively bad with delays on average of 30m, and even need to switch trains, better have a few alternative routes at hand, as plan on how to continue the trip when a connection is lost.
German trains are absolute chaos. Tickets are sent via PDF for trains running 3 hours late. I was in Frankfurt last year getting to Cologne and back a few times.
Coming from someone who has to commute via South Western railway into London everyday.
German trains have very much to complain about, but honestly, their customer facing IT is pretty good. I've not had to deal with PDF tickets nor printed tickets in years.
The website and app work well, in my experience. It's all pretty sleek and modern, too. It's the one area they do a good job in, to be honest.
Absolutely, it's probably the most consumer-friendly and reliable part of all of the Bahn services. Personnel is usually pretty great too, and that despite them having to suffer the most from all the inept decisions made in the upper ranks.
What? The app is infamous for just "forgetting" tickets and when you get caught you HAVE to pay a fine and no they will not accept screenshots. You will win in court but have fun paying for everything in advance.
The DB App is great. It lets you buy tickets, informs you of delays and possible alternatives especially if you miss your connection, you can file a request for a refund, you can reserve a seat, you can use the comfort check-in and check yourself in, so you wouldn't have to show your ticket. You can even request a refund up to two hours after you purchased your ticket, without any fees.
No PDFs or print-outs or forms are needed.
Yes, you still get a PDF ticket sent to your email, but you aren't required to use it.
What is the issue with receiving tickets as PDF? It is the most flexible yet digital option. PDFs work regardless of the medium. You can show it in the phone or you can always add them to DB Navigator App anyways or if you would like to be old school, just print them.
NFC is limited access for phones. You need to pay Google and Apple tax. Android does allow independent communication but it is not widespread and you'll lose a big chunk of Apple users. You basically tie yourself to a platform that way.
You can scan and add your QRs (or more correctly Aztec barcodes) in DB Navigator app already. If you bought it via your own account (instead of your company buying it), you don't even need to do it. The tickets automatically appear.
DB Navigator is one of the best transport apps and already implements some caching. However you're ultimately tied to cell network or WiFi in train for certain othet apps and the quality of implementation. PDFs don't expire.
> Tickets are sent via PDF for trains running 3 hours late
I agree that the delays are unacceptable, but the official app is great w/ digital tickets + seat registration, you don't need the PDF at all (it's even optional during checkout, so if you don't like them you can just uncheck the box lol)
Say you have to pick a flight and you take the train to the airport. You can bet your train will be delayed, so if it ever happens at least you'll get a payout.
I'd love to see a Japanese version of this. "Bet which of one of JR Chūō Line, JR Saikyō Line, and Tokyo Metro Tōzai Line will NOT get a delay certificate printed today".
Look at you, complaining about your famously on schedule Japanese trains! ;)
Over here in France a train is considered on time if it has up to a 15mn delay. We can ask for a very partial refund only if it has at least 30mn of delay, and we get a voucher to book another train that will also be late.
Since downdetector has been bought, we can make a new site, where people can bet on what sites will be down. The whole market can be automated fairly easily to check whether a given website is responding.
This should divert a substantial proportion of the world's DDoS capacity.
I was considering trains for a Berlin-Frankfurt trip, and after looking at the performance of the preferred train, I'm not sure I want to still go that way: 25% cancellations :/
You surely haven't read the whole of it. There's more!
> Sinderella
She has to leave the ball by midnight — but her last train was cancelled. Now she roams the platform in glass slippers, waiting for a replacement bus.
For context, David Kriesel gave the infamous talk called “BahnMining” at 36C3 highlighting this. IIUC it’s only available in German: https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk
I have loved my journeys through Germany in recent years; locals are more than willing to speak English to you and are happy to direct you around.
This does hit home though: I did miss an international flight due to the S-Bahn out of Munich. Eventually they were like "this train is so delayed, we're going to make everyone get off and catch the next one". ::shrugs::
...and the Munich airport is just painful in general (the flight status boards shorten the flight numbers with ellipsis for instance).
Every single thing one does in life is a gamble that carries a probability of success.
Getting a degree. Investing in a business. Investing in a relationship. Having kids. Smoking. Booking a flight cheaper but with no possibility of cancellation. Moving town. Not moving town.
I could go on forever.
Everything is a gamble. Some forms of gambling are more socially acceptable than others.
The difference, in everyhthing, is emotional control and knowing how much you stand to lose if it goes wrong.
We'll have won politics the day people understand that individual responsibility doesn't work at scale, and that, on average, people just respond to incentives.
The difference is that "good gambling" has a positive expectation value. Getting a degree confers knowledge that you think enables you to do new and valuable things that exceed the cost of the degree. Booking without cancellation saves money on average if you are more certain of your travel plans than the airline. Smoking makes you feel good, I'm told. I wouldn't do that.
People used to bet on ships sinking and sailors drowning.
Till they learned better.
Edit:
This was common until Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act of 1745.
Before that, speculators could take out "wagering policies" on vessels they had no connection to. This created "coffin ships" - unseaworthy vessels sent to sea because the insurance payout for a wreck was worth more than the ship itself. The law introduced "insurable interest," meaning you cannot bet on a disaster unless you stand to lose something if it happens. This removed the incentive for sabotage and murder for profit.
Modern prediction markets are heading toward the same problem. Betting on train delays or bridge collapses without having any stake gives bad actors a reason to cause it. If the cost of sabotage is lower than the payout, the market effectively pays for the disaster to happen.
That was far crazier than I expected going into it... To the point I've seen Hollywood movies with far more believable plots that people would find unrealistic.
Oh man, det er virkelig rigtigt sjovt!!! :-D
"Jurisdiction notice
For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish."
> You now speak rudimentary Danish."
Så, norsk da. :)
best comment this week, including the username
Kamalåso
> In January 2026, Germany's federal court ruled that purchasing a Deutsche Bahn ticket constitutes a form of gambling (Glücksspiel), citing that “the probability of arriving on time is statistically comparable to a coin flip.”
> Rather than contest the ruling, DBSM embraced it. If riding our trains is gambling, then passengers deserve the right to hedge.
> BahnBet is our answer: a platform where you can bet against your own train, turning delays into suffering, and suffering into profit. Every minute of punctuality you lose, you can win back in deliciously valuable caßh.
I'll save everyone a web search. This is satire and there isn't any such German federal court ruling.
It also speaks to the world that we live in these days - I'm having a hard time separating satire from reality.
In all fairness, being both an avid Deutsche Bahn victim (with the Gold victim status), and knowing the German court system ... that was perfectly plausible, if a bit optimistic. I'd do many, many things if I got a 50% chance of arriving on time.
Gold status? Does that mean you only have to fill in two pages of forms instead of three for refunds?
Gold victim status - made me laugh
for the people who wouldn't have inadvertently clicked on the website: it's not real money, it's a campaign to nudge the German provider to care about their infamous delays
It's incredible that about 80% of people in this thread seem to be commenting without having looked at the website.
In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Also, it went through a pseudo-privatisation back then, which hasn't helped (just private enough to focus on quarterly profits by letting bridges decay so that they have to be rebuilt or repaired in a few years, just public enough that they have to serve a lot of non-lucrative areas by law).
I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt. It's just that politicians dealt them a really bad hand. And if Germany were to properly invest in infrastructure from now on, there's so much stuff that has to be repaired that reliability would go down even more in the next decade or so (seriously, this is not something you could fix in a year or two, even with hundreds of billions).
> In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
I think the defense is that it's the fault of the politicians (CDU/CSU, actually), as they are the ones allocating funds towards train infrastructure. The Deutsche Bahn is state-owned in all but name (which was one of the major fuckups of the last red-green government).
Well people keep electing CxU. The current structure of DB is formed by Helmut Kohl cabinet which is CxU.
> It's incredible that about 80% of people in this thread seem to be commenting without having looked at the website.
Are you new to the Internet? This has been a thing since (at least) Slashdot. :)
Yes everyone does their best but in typical german fashion nobody does the right thing because it would mean to break some rules or habit. Its a general problem but it shows hard at DB.
As someone who is in a group who regularly trashes DB at will, no one blames the line employees, but definitely blame people in upper levels of management
> I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt.
I think most people don't blame the normal employees. The blame is on the management layers, the "Wasserkopf", that gives themselves boni, even if things are done poorly and are going badly. A disconnect from the reality on the tracks.
I don't see improvements. I rather see worse and worse reliability, even though Deutsche Bahn asks for more and more money from the government. That money is disappearing somewhere, at least partially, instead of arriving in projects for improving the situation. In many places, if not most, there isn't even a single turnout track, so that any construction work halts the whole line. Disastrous. You cannot ask people to buy train tickets for 100 to 200 EUR, and then be hours late. I mean, you can, but then you are delusional. They are not surviving because of their great product or service, they are only surviving, because people don't have good alternatives. Basically, it is extortion. In other countries I pay 1/10 of the ticket price and I arrive on friggin' time, on a much longer ride.
Privitisation is a huge curse, and a tremendous scam perpetuated by capitalist financiers. Where has it ever produced better results? No private entity can provide a service at cost like the government can.
SpaceX or rockets Generally, Telecom in Germany, flights in Europe, train transport in Japan and Italy.
> Telecom in Germany
Telekom is a profitable enterprise. Yet, telecom infrastructure in Germany is on a remarkably bad level and relatively expensive. Cell coverage is also still bad, especially when travelling via rail or car.
With the exception if the Japanese Rail, all the other examples are different in one crucial detail: they are not natural monopolies.
I don’t think you’re aware of how bad the national railway has been managed in japan, they even went broke in the 80s with trillions in debt and had to split up sell off all their infrastructure and vehicles. That’s the reason why there’s often many non-interconnected competing stations at the same site today.
Yep, compared to other countries, Germany is almost third-world country, when it comes to reliable Internet service, and prices.
Allowing private competition is generally good, but converting an existing state monopoly to a private corporation is generally bad.
> Allowing private competition is generally good,
Except when they quickly build cartels. See internet in Germany.
I would not call telecommunications privatization in Germany a success story.
Yes, we can use more devices now. Prices have stayed more or less the same (or have risen, corrected by inflation. Service quality has collapsed, though.
> It's incredible that about 80% of people in this thread seem to be commenting without having looked at the website.
It’s almost as if people are tired of having betting shoved down their throats.
> I work there
OMG. Employers to never work for:
- the Bund - the Oeffentlichen - Deutsche Bahn - Unions, especially ver.di - established / legacy parties
I am pretty sure that they know about the delays. A nice thing about the Deutsche Bahn is that they exist. It's not the case in every country in the world.
Sure, they can improve, but it seems possible. The French SNCF has improved a lot in the last decade, for instance.
You're actually not necessarily right.
At this point here in the south of Germany not having DB would be an improvement.
Now it exists and you might even try to take it just to be delayed and disappointed. You'll lose your money and they behave in their arrogant manner with impunity.
Their customer "service" will definitely tell you how it's your own fault for having had the nerve to actually try to take their train. You might have even carried some dirt to the train for Christs sake!
So yeah. Not having it would already be an improvement. You'd just shrug and move on and take an alternative transport. Even horse and carriage would be better.
I understand your frustration, and as I said they should improve (though that probably requires time and money). The SNCF shows that it is possible.
> Even horse and carriage would be better.
How does the existence of the DB prevent you from travelling with your horse and carriage? Your attitude doesn't seem very constructive, to be honest.
> A nice thing about the Deutsche Bahn is that they exist. It's not the case in every country in the world.
EU does not have a train monopoly. There are other train companies in Germany (FlixTrain, OBB, BRB...). And operators from other countries can also operate there, even French SNCF!
DB is blocking slots on rail, that could be used by other operators. And they are not going to change because it is Germany.
All operators run on DB infrastructure.
I recently experienced this with CD from Karlovy Vary to Berlin. It was snowing that day and inside of the Czech Republic I was enjoying the scenic view of the Egerland without any delays.
But as soon as we pulled into Germany, the train came to a stop - problems with the rail security infrastructure, nothing the train operator has any influence on.
We eventually arrived in Berlin with +1h delay.
> All operators run on DB infrastructure.
Rails, buildings and train stations are in separate company (DB InfraGO), owned by DB.
But DB has no monopoly on trains in Germany, any company can run trains there.
This is true. DB trains get me from one point to another point, and in my experience, are usually not more than a few hours delayed end-to-end.
Remember that if your train is delayed more than a certain amount (30 minutes?) you have the legal right to ignore the routing on your ticket and take any train you want, that leads towards the destination on your ticket. Consider it an adventure. The app can suggest alternative routes in real-time, and you can also ask at the info desk at any station that has one.
Huge number of people use DB for regional transport for commute. They get affected by 10 mins delay since connections are missed
The problem is the infrastructure. There is already the Generalsanierung under way, it will take a decade and secure the status quo.
A lot of delays are due to rail corridors being at capacity, but overboarding bureaucracy makes any improvement there a generational project.
Hamburg - Hanover has been discussed for decades with strong opposition from NIMBY groups with no solution in sight.
But even if there is no opposition things take ages. E.g. for restoring the 2nd track and electrification between Cottbus and Görlitz the plan is now to finish the project by 2041.
This is absolutely insane for 100km of track that were removed as WW2 reparations.
And looking at previous projects it's unlikely to finish in time.
The new S-Bahn track in Berlin between the main station and Gesundbrunnen was supposed to open in 2017. It got delayed over and over and is now finally scheduled to open by the end of this month - just a delay of 9 years.
And that's with an interim station because the real station at Hauptbahnhof wasn't finished in time - and no intermediate stop, that's now also in the planning phase and will mean the line will have to be interrupted again in the near future
When Generalsanierung is over, they can start again right away. That's just the maintenance/running cost. What is needed is building turnout tracks and other stuff to avoid delays. The delays turn people away from riding trains, or buying tickets. We want to combat climate change, but our train service is so bad, that people prefer to drive 4-person cars, alone, for hours, during which they need to be paying attention to the road at all times, instead of sitting in a train and relaxing, or getting stuff done, that they can do during the ride. There is something fundamentally wrong.
Thanks for the context. Since I'm not interested in betting, I had not clicked on the grey on white About link at the bottom, which says:
> All the trains, delays, and data on this app are real.But the money isn't – because for that I'd need to move to Malta. Or Cyprus. Or Schleswig-Holstein.
I wonder how hard it would be to get a court ruling or new law that DB is required to bet on every arrival, and make their bets public in easily-digestible formats like .csv
I'd really like to see that happen for the S-trains, as well--DB loves nothing more than continuing to project an on-time arrival on the station board, as the time of departure comes and goes and other trains arrive and depart.
DB is a job program. Nobody at DB cares.
Surprising but train drivers and operators also like to go home on time.
The problem people have is the trains don't get them home on time.
For Deutsche Bahn, freelance contracting jobs in their IT famously always require 2+ years experience in train infrastructure companies as a hard requirement. Not joking, this is a common pattern in their job ads. Look at this ad, where they are looking for a Go/React/RabbitMQ expert: https://www.freelancermap.de/projekt/senior-fullstack-entwic...
Why is that an issue? It's a freelance gig, so you are free to ask for whatever requirements you want.
But I remember being interviewed for a cybersecurity job at Siemens's Trains division and the german guys there started grilling me on some obscure cybersecurity standards used by the rail industry, even though that was never in my pentest resume and it's something that can be learned on the job.
Germans really hate hiring people who don't 100% fit a job description no matter how impossible it is. No wonder their economy is stagnant, when it's based on HR box ticking instead of aptitudes.
Because there is no other railway infrastructure company. They are looking for people they already employ.
What do you mean? How can they look hire people if they already employ them?
Exactly my point.
It's a problem because they don't get good employees and then they don't work well as a company.
Maybe they don't want good employees, they want yes-men instead that don't rock the boat and keep the politics gravy train going for the C-suites.
Good employees are required for the private sector that has competition, not for pseudo-state controlled pseudo-monopolies.
Idea for using the betting/data or other statistics about potential train delay:
One gets back 50% if reaching the destination is delayed by more than 2h. Schedule the journey such that this is probable, making the journey 50% cheaper. Potentially with being able to define where one should be stuck waiting for the next train connected with sight seeing opportunities (such as the nice quarter near the Frankfurt main train station -- old ECB building!).
In 2019 there was a talk about data mining the DB arrival data [1] (yes, this problem is nothing new). One of the takeaways was that on some connections you can actually buy a "Sparticket" (cheaper, but only valid for a specific train), but get it upgraded to a "Flexticket" (more expensive, can take any train on the route) for free. This works because a delay of more than X minutes removes the specific train requirement and some routes are nearly always delayed by at least that threshold.
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit... (German)
For international through Germany we used to get 100% back after four hour delays but they stopped doing that ... For obvious reasons. I traveled for free multiple times in the (long) past. Also fun of you wanted to get more back: if you had a first class ticket and reserved seat and had to switch trains and re-reserved you would get a free ticket with a stamp price for about 5 euro. Which you could ask back. So you got at least a coffee for free.
Countdown to someone pulling the emergency brake because they have a lot of money at stake
No insider betting! Ethics, ethics!!
+ the conductors driving more slowly
It would be ironic if it turned out to improve the situation.
Driving slower can make things more predictable and reduce wear, making breakdowns less likely. Trains being on time is all about consistency.
Damn someone foiled my plan already.
Years ago, we build systems to predict delays on the German rail network. Paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X1...
The complexity of operations is astounding and the organisational challenges (e.g. railway deregulation push) make it even harder.
The proliferation of online gambling is IMO one of the bigger under-reported trends in modern society, and has a real potential for massive externalities throughout society.
That is most definitely NOT under-reported. I read about this as a giant red flag every week.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/america-polym...
Just because it is reported does not mean it's not under-reported.
Though, I probably shouldn't have even talked about the reporting, and instead just said "this is something we're under-worried about as a society".
At least one regulator has been taking note at least: https://nltimes.nl/2026/02/20/dutch-regulators-block-access-...
This is NOT a genuine gambling site but a take on DB to remind them of the issue and take it seriously.
I'm aware, but the existence of this site both reminded me of the existence of this problem, and IMO likely will inspire polymarket or some other crypto gambling site to offer the 'real' version of this.
Agree on under-reported. But what externalities?
Addiction. Misappropriation of others' secrets. Perverse incentives.
As a German train driver this excites me greatly.
Having a gambling addict in your life can be just as destructive if not more destructive as having a drug addict in your life.
This is something that most people don't currently understand because most people don't really have much experience with gambling addicts and the sort of horrible things they will do to satisfy their cravings, but as the amount of gamblers in society grows explosively, we're all going to be feeling the effects of being surrounded by these people.
There are (illegal) ways to delay trains as a person
Should be noted that this is just a meme, nothing with real money. Its a joke based on the constant delay of DB trains
More gambling addicts in gutters.
Constantly reported on in the FT
it was always going to happen. there was even an episode of The Office where they started betting on meaningless outcomes for a little sense of purpose.
Betting on local circle is okay since balance of power is generally okay
It's all sliding slope when the only way an average citizen can reap the economic growth of their own country is stock market and saving only makes them poorer.
Contrary to what crypto currency enthusiasts believe, having inflation (most of the time) is the only feasible and sane way for an economy.
Why ever do anything at all with your money, ever, otherwise? Except for basic needs.
Yeah, you would have to focus on buying things you actually need. Be able to save for and look forward towards a stable future. Don't get a new pocket computer every year because the software is not updated anymore. Use fewer subscription services? Maybe do away with the disposable vapes with lithium ion batteries in them.
Yes, but simple inflation isn't the problem. In a stable economy, we spend money as we received it, and take on loans for large purchases. In fact the economy was that way before. Now, things are too unsteady for that.
> In a stable economy, we spend money as we received it, and take on loans for large purchases. In fact the economy was that way before.
You used to be able to save for most large purchases without going into debt. Even cars.
But no, these days cars tend to be so goddamn expensive while at the same time being so low-margin products for the dealerships that even if you theoretically can pay in cash, the salespeople do their best to force you into some sort of debt because the kickback from that is the only way they make money. And practically, rents suck up so much of your income you can't save anyway.
Saving is not 'not doing anything at all with your money.' Saving is lending your money to a generally low risk debtor, called bank.
That's not how banks work and hasn't been for decades.
What is a deposit if it's not a loan from you to the bank?
Nothing. It's just a number in an account. It's what we call money basically.
Banks don't profit from keeping your deposits, they profit from running the money supply which empowers them to create new money which they tax or, in other words, loans on which they charge interest.
Go and try to withdraw something tangible with intrinsic value from a bank and you'll see they don't owe you anything at all. The most you'll get from them is paper, but even then you'll find it withdraw all your money in paper.
I just opened an account for you in my own bank, in fact. You have one million credits. You are free to send and receive credits from anybody else with an account (which is nobody, unfortunately). I owe you nothing.
> Why ever do anything at all with your money, ever, otherwise? Except for basic needs.
Why indeed? If people are only buying stuff because they are afraid of their money being worth less in the future then those are things people don't even want, let alone need. Why is it a good thing for us to endlessly churn out stuff people don't even want?
When I was young (70s-80s), we were all amazed by Deutsche Bahn's punctuality and quality of service (second only to the Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses). Now, French and Italian trains are a lot more reliable, which is rather strange.
The Swiss Federal Railways asked German trains to wait at the border and has even ban many German trains to enter Switzerland over excessive delays to prevent their train schedule from being affected.
The site is hilarious by the way. I hope it will have an effect on DB, even though I doubt it.
The way I see it, French trains are more reliable, but they mostly go from Paris to other places. Germany operates a mesh network, with more lines, more centers, and more trains.
Surely a factor. As is the deregulation.
I've been living in Germany for a very long time and the real decline started some ten years ago. At the beginning mostly because of poor maintenance. My first years with the DB 100 card (allowing to travel on all trains) were a pleasure then it deteriote to the point where you start yourself: where is this heading. As I said, the ban of SBB on German trains was a turning point for me.
But You're right about the networks being different (mostly because France suppressed many local lines in the last 20 years.
Yeah, unfortunely it isn't that hard to win a bit, the situation has become relatively bad with delays on average of 30m, and even need to switch trains, better have a few alternative routes at hand, as plan on how to continue the trip when a connection is lost.
German trains are absolute chaos. Tickets are sent via PDF for trains running 3 hours late. I was in Frankfurt last year getting to Cologne and back a few times.
Coming from someone who has to commute via South Western railway into London everyday.
Sad state of affairs for Germany.
German trains have very much to complain about, but honestly, their customer facing IT is pretty good. I've not had to deal with PDF tickets nor printed tickets in years.
The website and app work well, in my experience. It's all pretty sleek and modern, too. It's the one area they do a good job in, to be honest.
Absolutely, it's probably the most consumer-friendly and reliable part of all of the Bahn services. Personnel is usually pretty great too, and that despite them having to suffer the most from all the inept decisions made in the upper ranks.
>their customer facing IT is pretty good
What? The app is infamous for just "forgetting" tickets and when you get caught you HAVE to pay a fine and no they will not accept screenshots. You will win in court but have fun paying for everything in advance.
The DB App is great. It lets you buy tickets, informs you of delays and possible alternatives especially if you miss your connection, you can file a request for a refund, you can reserve a seat, you can use the comfort check-in and check yourself in, so you wouldn't have to show your ticket. You can even request a refund up to two hours after you purchased your ticket, without any fees.
No PDFs or print-outs or forms are needed.
Yes, you still get a PDF ticket sent to your email, but you aren't required to use it.
What is the issue with receiving tickets as PDF? It is the most flexible yet digital option. PDFs work regardless of the medium. You can show it in the phone or you can always add them to DB Navigator App anyways or if you would like to be old school, just print them.
How about NFC? App with a QR code displayed?
Could be a force of habit for UK but that's mostly how we do tickets. Printing is usually still an option.
NFC is limited access for phones. You need to pay Google and Apple tax. Android does allow independent communication but it is not widespread and you'll lose a big chunk of Apple users. You basically tie yourself to a platform that way.
You can scan and add your QRs (or more correctly Aztec barcodes) in DB Navigator app already. If you bought it via your own account (instead of your company buying it), you don't even need to do it. The tickets automatically appear.
DB Navigator is one of the best transport apps and already implements some caching. However you're ultimately tied to cell network or WiFi in train for certain othet apps and the quality of implementation. PDFs don't expire.
They have an app with a code that isn't QR displayed. You can also get a PDF to print if you want to.
> Tickets are sent via PDF for trains running 3 hours late
I agree that the delays are unacceptable, but the official app is great w/ digital tickets + seat registration, you don't need the PDF at all (it's even optional during checkout, so if you don't like them you can just uncheck the box lol)
Maybe i booked through a shadow site. The ticket office printed out something else.
The ticket office did have impressive throughput and lines building up.
Try traveling by train through Eastern Europe. Makes you cry for Germany's Deutsche Bahn.
Say you have to pick a flight and you take the train to the airport. You can bet your train will be delayed, so if it ever happens at least you'll get a payout.
An insurance of sorts, so to speak.
I'd love to see a Japanese version of this. "Bet which of one of JR Chūō Line, JR Saikyō Line, and Tokyo Metro Tōzai Line will NOT get a delay certificate printed today".
Look at you, complaining about your famously on schedule Japanese trains! ;)
Over here in France a train is considered on time if it has up to a 15mn delay. We can ask for a very partial refund only if it has at least 30mn of delay, and we get a voucher to book another train that will also be late.
Perfect for hedging the emotional damage on my daily commute in monetary units.
Site is down, archive link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260303171349/https://bahn.bet/
Is there a site where I can bet on site reliability?
This is a great business plan.
Since downdetector has been bought, we can make a new site, where people can bet on what sites will be down. The whole market can be automated fairly easily to check whether a given website is responding.
This should divert a substantial proportion of the world's DDoS capacity.
This made me think of another idea for you/us:
Bet on which companies will be hacked next! Divert some hacker capacity…
There people who bet way too early, and sometimes even before departure time. Like hundreds of euros. What does that mean? Mistyping? Cancellation?
It’s fake money. It’s not a real betting platform, so you can bet whatever.
It's not real money.
if you want to look up historic delay data (to make better guesses) you can use zugspaet: https://zugspaet.de/
I was considering trains for a Berlin-Frankfurt trip, and after looking at the performance of the preferred train, I'm not sure I want to still go that way: 25% cancellations :/
If your train is cancelled, you can take the next train or a different train, without buying a new ticket. The app will tell you this.
So 3h of sitting on the floor because there's no seat after a canceled one?
I mean yes, better than no transport, but it's ridiculous. And if you have an appointment in the morning, 2h of delay are a deal breaker.
The JetLag The Game guys would love this, because they have been Deutsche Bahn'd quite a few times :D
DBSM :D
If a responsible person is reading: The confirmation link of the email-verification doesn't work (at least for me)
> No real money is exchanged on this platform. All caßh is fictional, virtual, and entirely made up, much like Deutsche Bahn's timetable.
Sick burn hahaha
You surely haven't read the whole of it. There's more!
> Sinderella She has to leave the ball by midnight — but her last train was cancelled. Now she roams the platform in glass slippers, waiting for a replacement bus.
Hahaha, I missed that. Amazing! Great copy writing right there.
Any ICE passing Frankfurt is a guaranteed 30 minute delay. Too easy to win.
For context, David Kriesel gave the infamous talk called “BahnMining” at 36C3 highlighting this. IIUC it’s only available in German: https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk
Watch the original, there you can select an English simultaneous translation: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit...
That's the minimum though. It can surely escalate to 5 hours with people on the tracks.
this is the country we romanticise for decades...and still many people do.
I have loved my journeys through Germany in recent years; locals are more than willing to speak English to you and are happy to direct you around.
This does hit home though: I did miss an international flight due to the S-Bahn out of Munich. Eventually they were like "this train is so delayed, we're going to make everyone get off and catch the next one". ::shrugs::
...and the Munich airport is just painful in general (the flight status boards shorten the flight numbers with ellipsis for instance).
everything in this world will be turned into gambling. this stuff is a cancer on society
Every single thing one does in life is a gamble that carries a probability of success.
Getting a degree. Investing in a business. Investing in a relationship. Having kids. Smoking. Booking a flight cheaper but with no possibility of cancellation. Moving town. Not moving town.
I could go on forever.
Everything is a gamble. Some forms of gambling are more socially acceptable than others.
The difference, in everyhthing, is emotional control and knowing how much you stand to lose if it goes wrong.
We'll have won politics the day people understand that individual responsibility doesn't work at scale, and that, on average, people just respond to incentives.
If you don't incentivise individual responsibility, you don't get it.
The difference is that "good gambling" has a positive expectation value. Getting a degree confers knowledge that you think enables you to do new and valuable things that exceed the cost of the degree. Booking without cancellation saves money on average if you are more certain of your travel plans than the airline. Smoking makes you feel good, I'm told. I wouldn't do that.
Meine Güte…
…rzüge?
People used to bet on ships sinking and sailors drowning. Till they learned better.
Edit: This was common until Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act of 1745.
Before that, speculators could take out "wagering policies" on vessels they had no connection to. This created "coffin ships" - unseaworthy vessels sent to sea because the insurance payout for a wreck was worth more than the ship itself. The law introduced "insurable interest," meaning you cannot bet on a disaster unless you stand to lose something if it happens. This removed the incentive for sabotage and murder for profit.
Modern prediction markets are heading toward the same problem. Betting on train delays or bridge collapses without having any stake gives bad actors a reason to cause it. If the cost of sabotage is lower than the payout, the market effectively pays for the disaster to happen.
Whoever downvoted this wants you to ignore centuries of legal precedent designed to prevent exactly this kind of blood money. Those who ignore the lessons of the past learn wisdom in blood... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_ship_(insurance)#:~:tex... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Insurance_Act_1745#:~:t...
They still do, they just call it insurance.
No they don't, the practice was banned some time ago. You now require a "insurable interest". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Insurance_Act_1745#:~:t...
Could you elaborate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucona kinda fits...
That was far crazier than I expected going into it... To the point I've seen Hollywood movies with far more believable plots that people would find unrealistic.
I just noticed the Wikipedia article has a very relevant and interesting link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_ship_(insurance)
Where can I bet when this will be taken down?
(Asking since polymarket is forbidden in DE)
Polymarket is a set of blockchain smart contracts. Only the user interface is blocked in DE.
It's not real money. Everyone starts with a bag of pretend money.